It appears that you are using either an older, classic Web browser or a hand-held device that allows you to view our content but may not work with every feature of our site. If you are using an older browser, please upgrade for the best experience.

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs. He previously taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, where he served as Master of the Social Science Collegiate Division and Deputy Dean of Social Sciences. He has been a Resident Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, and a consultant for the Institute of Defense Analyses, the Center for Naval Analyses, and the National Defense University. He serves on the editorial boards of Foreign Policy, Security Studies, International Relations, and Journal of Cold War Studies, and as Co-Editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, published by Cornell University Press. He was elected a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in May 2005.

Professor Walt is the author of The Origins of Alliances (1987), which received the 1988 Edgar S. Furniss National Security Book Award, and Revolution and War (1996). His recent publications include “An Unnecessary War,” Foreign Policy, (Winter 2002–03), “American Hegemony: Its Prospects and Pitfalls,” Naval War College Review, (Spring 2002); “Beyond bin Laden: Reshaping U.S. Foreign Policy” (International Security, Winter 2001/02); and Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (W.W. Norton, 2005).

2015

By Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs; Faculty Chair, International Security Program

"In Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and several other places, U.S. leaders failed to realize that there were limits to what U.S. power could accomplish and that military force is a crude instrument that inevitably produces unintended consequences. Defeating third-rate armies and toppling foreign leaders was easy, but conventional military superiority did not enable Washington to govern foreign societies wisely or defeat stubborn local insurgencies."

By Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs; Faculty Chair, International Security Program

"Despite its past achievements, the EU now suffers from growing tensions and several self-inflicted wounds. The EU is likely to experience repeated crises and internal divisions, and one cannot rule out a gradual and irreversible decline in its cohesion and influence. Because a prosperous and tranquil Europe is in America's interest, this is not good news for the United States."

By Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs; Faculty Chair, International Security Program

"...[A] country's worldview will also affect the capabilities it acquires and thus its ability to influence the behavior of others. When countries with different worldviews interact, one or both may find themselves unable to speak or act in a language that the other understands."

By Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs; Faculty Chair, International Security Program

"As the court made clear, if consenting adults are not free to fall in love with whomever they are drawn to and to express that love openly in the institution of marriage, then they are being denied the full rights that other citizens enjoy and they are not in fact truly free. Today's decision eliminated this obvious contradiction between our ideals and our practices, and it should be celebrated for that reason alone."

By Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs; Faculty Chair, International Security Program

"So what do we do if the Islamic State succeeds in holding on to its territory and becoming a real state? Posen says that the United States (as well as others) should deal with the Islamic State the same way it has dealt with other revolutionary state-building movements: with a policy of containment."

By Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs; Faculty Chair, International Security Program

"If you want to something to worry about, you should ponder our inability or unwillingness to learn from past mistakes, the ability of special interests to warp key elements of U.S. foreign policy, the bipartisan tendency to recycle failed policies and the people who devised them, and our habitual surprise when we meddle in places we don't understand and discover that some of the people we’ve been pushing around don't like it, want us out, and are willing to do nasty things to achieve that goal. Unless and until these features of U.S. foreign policy are altered, even those of us who are lucky to be living here in the relative security of the United States have something to worry about."

By Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs; Faculty Chair, International Security Program

"I promised to be brief and I know you are eager to get on with the rest of this celebration, and then with the rest of your lives. But I will close with one request: please do a better job of managing global affairs than my generation did. We did a few things right for sure, but we screwed a lot of things up too, especially in the years after 9/11. Perhaps worst of all, we didn't hold those responsible to account for their mistakes."

By Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs; Faculty Chair, International Security Program

"...[T]he alliances forged during the long Cold War have been around a long time and have proven to be remarkably durable, but can we really be confident NATO or America's Asian alliances will still be around and still be meaningful thirty-five years down the road? If Russian power continues to decline and the United States focuses more and more attention on Asia, NATO will be increasingly irrelevant."

By Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs; Faculty Chair, International Security Program

"Compared with the need to maintain global economic growth or prevent irreversible and potentially catastrophic damage to the Earth's atmosphere, going to the brink over some piles of sand around Mischief Reef doesn't seem all that significant. It's a classic use of 'salami tactics,' where a revisionist power seeks to alter the status quo through a series of small steps, each of them seemingly innocuous but whose cumulative impact could be enormous."

Most Viewed

Events Calendar

We host a busy schedule of events throughout the fall, winter and spring. Past guests include: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former Vice President Al Gore, and former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev.